IMPOSSIBLE OWLS: Essays from the Ends of the World

Witty and whimsical, The New Yorker wrote that the book 'leads us to some remarkable, unpredictable places, from the Alaskan wilderness to a supermarket parking lot in Southern Japan, from an old movie palace in Moscow to the underground histories of Northern Oklahoma.' From its opening journey into remote Alaska for the Iditarod Sled Dog Race, a quest that culminates on the frozen sea between the United States and Russia, Brian Phillips's book leads us on a kaleidoscopic exploration of contemporary reality. He takes us to a sumo tournament in Japan where he becomes obsessed with the suicide of a famous writer, to the jungle in India where he considers the intertwined histories of conservation movements and man-eating tigers, to the studio of a great Russian animator, to a royal tour of the Yukon Territory with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, and into the weird heart of America where he visits the gates of Area 51. Writing about the tiger he notes not its size or beauty but its capacity to disappear and this is typical of the personal content and sideways views in these big and powerful and beautiful essays. In places deeply poetic, well researched on our British royal family and all of his subjects. 331pp.